Rainforest

K drew the short straw last night as the sofa bed turned out not to be as comfy as the bed I had, but nevertheless we both had pretty good sleeps.
This apartment is lovely…the finishing are exactly in our style and it’s so convenient bang in the town and a few minutes walk to the beach.
Nevertheless, time to swap the coast for inland and we struck out quite early to head up east along Waterfall Way. We stopped at Bellingen which lots of people said was a lovely old hippy town. Seemed a bit hick to us, and we had a long wait for our takeout coffee, bagel and cinnamon roll that we’d ordered to save us time from eating in. Hey ho, we got them eventually (and they were both very tasty!). Drove up through beautiful countryside, still being very lucky with the weather as we drove in sun despite some clouds dotting the sky. The open plains soon gave way to wooded mountains (ranges called Scotchman(!) and Irishman) which we climbed into on windy roads. We pulled in at Dorrigo National Park centre and a really helpful ranger told us which paths to take and what to watch and listen out for (including what to avoid, like the stinging trees). We walked down through the rainforest with its huge buttressed trees and lots of new bird sounds. Our trip around Australia has been marked by the much noisier birds everywhere, especially the white cockatoos, but the ones in the forest were different altogether. One, the eastern whipbird, had an incredible call like the crack of a whip, and we heard it everywhere but didn’t see it. Didn’t catch the lyrebird either, but did see a bush turkey and a massive Lace Monitor lizard sunning himself on the path in a patch of sunshine. The ranger had warned us we might see a red and black snake in the sun but thankfully we didn’t, just this big lizard who then ambled into the trees when a family group came upon him. The children were partly thrilled and partly scared, but luckily a passing man who wasn’t scared of him got him off the path to let us all through. Have to admit it was all quite exciting!
When we reached the waterfall it was lovely….plunging down to below us and with a cave that meant you could walk along behind it. Don’t think I’ve ever done that before and it was great….and I left a clay handprint on the wall (copying someone else to be fair!) as we thought about people doing this before us. Enjoyed some peaceful time there….the whole park was relatively quiet in terms of tourists so it was good to just commune with the place uninterrupted (apart from bird noise!)
The path down to the waterfall was quite steep and we weren’t looking forward to the return trip, but with a couple of rest stops it turned out fine, and we chatted to the ranger again at the top, telling home what we’d seen and heard and he showed us the various birds etc in his book.
Set off for the long drive to the Hunter Valley. Very quiet and for the most part good condition roads the whole way, crossing vast stretches with no signs of human habitation at all and then occasional tiny towns that had the look of a Hollywood Wild West town….a few straggly shops and a stone built hotel or similar with a fancy balcony. Almost no one to be seen, then lots of farmland again until the next place. Very different when we got to Armidale (named after the one on Skye!) which was a strangely huge and established place with huge brick built churches and schools and even a University. Absolutely nowhere open though except a big supermarket and some drive through fast food joints. I needed a cup of tea so it had to be from Maccas (as McDonald’s is called here), and we grabbed that and left…whole town had very odd feel to the place though.
We drove on, with K on a constant kangaroo watch (she only saw one jumping across a field although we counted 4 or 5 dead along the road ). Disappointing we’ve not seen more.
We passed over lots of little streams, with some very strange names (Burial Ground Creek, Man’s Arm Creek, Alan’s Water, Black Butt Gully etc) and saw lots of cattle and very lush grass.
As we arrived into the Hunter Valley we couldn’t see a lot of vines, but it was getting close to dusk and we were keen to find somewhere to get supper so headed for what we thought was the nearest town to our night’s stay….Pokolbin, Despite being on all the maps it seemingly doesn’t exist except as a name for an area where the vineyard estates are…no shop, cafe or anything, just all the estates with their fancy restaurants and little else. We ended up in the only non-estate place we could find….an Irish bar! Not exactly what we might have planned, but quite funny in being so off message for this wine region (As the barman said when I asked about their -small-wine selection, “it’s an Irish bar though….!). We had a perfectly acceptable supper and K could catch up on the Formula 1 race that had just finished in Japan and was on the Tv screens, then we went back to our place for the night and settled in.